With Mexico’s election of Claudia Sheinbaum as the first Jewish woman President, Mexico continues to try to teach the U.S. a lesson. This is not the first lesson the U.S. could have learned from Mexico. Not only was a Jewish woman elected president, but the next closest challenger was a woman too: Xóchitl Gálvez.
Due to recent events, the prospect of the election of a woman as President in the U.S. now seems closer than ever. In 1829, Mexico elected its first President, a man of African and Mexican descent named Vicente Guerrero. The U.S. elected its first President of African descent nearly 180 years later.
Nearly 200 years ago in 1829, Mexico abolished slavery without a shot being fired. Not coincidently, the man who abolished slavery in Mexico with a stroke of a pen, was the same Vicente Guerrero.
In contrast to Mexico’s abolition of slavery, America fought a bloody four-year Civil War with over half a million casualties to end slavery. America followed up the Civil War by persecuting the newly freed slaves and freemen with Jim Crow, discrimination and segregation that continues today. They also used the time after the Civil War to nearly exterminate the Native American population and force the survivors onto reservations. Not exactly “the shining city on the hill” that Reagan described.
Mexico and the city of New Orleans have had a special relationship for more than 200 years. A trade route between the port town of Tampico in Mexico, the port of New Orleans in the U.S. and Havana, Cuba formed a triangle of trade between these countries before Louisiana Territory became part of the U.S. in 1803.
New Orleans was chosen by Mexico’s Benito Juarez when he and some of his followers were exiled by Santa Ana in 1853 for opposition to his policies. Juarez and his group of followers lived among the Creoles of color in New Orleans until their return to Mexico. In 1858 Juarez was elected President.
Possibly because of Juarez’s exile, and the relationship between Mexico and New Orleans, prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Mexico encouraged hundreds of free people of color and Creole families from New Orleans to settle in an agricultural cooperative near Tampico. Those families left America voluntarily to escape increasing racism and violence against them simply because they were free people of color. At the time Southerners blamed free people of color for “agitating” slaves into rebellious behavior.
Currently false claims about the Mexican border poison the relationship the U.S. has with Mexico. First, the sheer number of people has been grossly exaggerated. Secondly, most of the people crossing the border are not Mexicans but nationals from failed states in South America, Africa and Asia.
While U.S. citizens can go to Mexico without a visa and stay for up to 6 months, my Mexican cousin has waited more than two years just to have an interview for a visa to see his sister in the U.S.
Mexico and the agricultural cooperative formed by Americans from New Orleans had their problems after 1858. The cooperative broke up by 1862, but most of the families, like mine the Pavageaus, stayed in Mexico. My family did well and despite their Afro-Creole heritage, they moved fluidly into Mexican society.
Contrast this with what happened after the Civil War to my American Afro-Creole relatives in the U.S. They were forced to sell property they had owned for decades because of segregation laws that made the French Quarter of New Orleans all white. They were denied the vote and forced to pay taxes for schools and services that they were not allowed to use because of their color. It was not until the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that my American relatives were guaranteed the right to vote in the U.S. My American family’s move into society and citizenry was anything but smooth.
Now to be fair, Mexico has had its share of problems. Poverty, drug trafficking and government corruption continue to be problems. They have had problems with their indigenous population over the years too. But some things they have gotten right and the U.S. would be well-served by paying more attention to and learning from their neighbor to the South. Hopefully, Sheinbaum will be successful in Mexico and the U.S. will finally pay attention to the lessons that our neighbors to the south have been trying to teach us for nearly two hundred years.
